


Supreme Courtship

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish), Legally Blonde - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-20
Updated: 2010-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>from the Best Enemies Kink Meme, "Legally Blonde (the musical) crossover, Ainley!Master/Davison!Callahan. The Master is surprised to find an older version of the Doctor working as a cutthroat lawyer, but it's okay because older men are hot." Now with more Eight and Lucie, because Sheridan Smith!Elle Woods could not be ignored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Supreme Courtship

Title: Supreme Courtship  
Author: [](http://x-los.livejournal.com/profile)[**x_los**](http://x-los.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: NC-17  
Pairing/Characters: Five/Ainley!Master, Eight, Lucie Miller, (Legally Blonde Musical Crossover) Elle Woods, Callahan  
Summary: from the Best Enemies Kink Meme, "Legally Blonde (the musical) crossover, Ainley!Master/Davison!Callahan. The Master is surprised to find an older version of the Doctor working as a cutthroat lawyer, but it's okay because older men are hot." Now with more Eight and Lucie, because Sheridan Smith!Elle Woods could not be ignored.  
Beta: [](http://aralias.livejournal.com/profile)[**aralias**](http://aralias.livejournal.com/), who MADE ME WRITE THIS. Passively. Well. Suggested I fill the prompt. Nagged a little. Is the person you should blame. Yes.

The Master (blending in impeccably with the aid of a crisp period suit and a self-satisfied, superior expression) sat through an entire lecture before confronting him.

“It suits you,” he began, with a curling, supremely amused smile. “Obviously the American accent does _not_ — but age sits well on you, Doctor. It gives you a distinguished aspect. The same could be said of your change of costume.” He gave the Doctor a restrained leer, his eyes roving over the man’s black jacket, his silk tie—perusing the planes of well-cut, tight-woven trousers as if he owned them (and had gotten the man underneath them in the bargain).

Professor Callahan had specialized in property law, and knew damn well that the inventory being avariciously sized up by this stranger was rightfully _his_.

“Do I know you?” Callahan asked, hissing the words through his teeth.

Apparently the Doctor arrived at ‘American’ by way of a detour through the Master’s idiolect. The Master felt rather flattered—at least until it sunk in that the Doctor was _yet again_ claiming not to know him. As if his earlier self’s preposterous evasions in the Death Zone hadn’t been insult enough.

“Does Mister Masters ring a bell?” At the Doctor’s blank look, then Master sighed. “Come now, Doctor,” the Master leaned in, showing him how sinister intensity was _really_ done, “what is this charade in aid of?”

Callahan narrowed his eyes. “You’re in the wrong building for doctors. In case you missed the plaque outside, this is Harvard Law. I have a law firm and a murder trial to get back to, if you don’t mind. Wait,” he paused a moment, “I don’t care if you do.”

Impatiently Callahan gathered his briefcase, snapped it shut, and spun it on the desk. The worked leather made an effortless twirl on the polished wood, and came to rest with the handle turned towards the door. Callahan picked it up without a glance, taking a step forward and glaring at the Master, who had yet to move out of his way.

“You run a law firm?” the Master scoffed. “Surely even in this ridiculous pose you’ve adopted you simply work for the ACLU, or the UN.”

At that Callahan laughed outright. “Hardly. Who ever heard of NOW getting you paid, let alone high or laid?” he sneered. As if he’d bother with _Legal Aid_. What sort of idiotic, insipid milk-sop did he look like?

He tried to push past the strange man—whose right to sit in on his lecture, or even to be on campus at all he was beginning to question. But a hand curled around his arm, jerked him still, and held him in place.

Angry, Callahan glanced down at the stranger’s face. “Get your—”

There was something arresting in the man’s look. It was as though he was searching for something in Callahan’s face, and, after a moment, as if he found it. He smirked, slow, took a step back, and circled Callahan like a shark scenting blood. Callahan swallowed.

“No one, I imagine,” the Master murmured, stepping in front of him again, having completed his short circuit, apparently (judging from his wolfish smile) entirely to his satisfaction. “But if that’s the sort of thing you _want…_ ” With a strange, pleasant grin and a chuckle, the Master turned and walked to the door.

“I’ll return for you soon,” he said without stopping, without turning. “We’ll continue this discussion then.”

As he turned the corner, Callahan let out a long breath, only for it to catch in his throat when the man appeared in the doorframe again.

“Incidentally, I like the tie.” He gave an ironic wave, and then was gone. Callahan was left fondling the clasp of his brief case, confused as to what the hell had just happened.

Up until ten minutes ago, Professor Edward Callahan, who was never careless with money, would have bet his percentage in his firm that he was about as heterosexual as it was possible for a man who appreciated good tailoring to be. But something about that Masters had deeply unsettled him. He was dimly aware that, despicably, his breathing would best be described as ‘panting.’ In the mirrored surface of his classroom projection equipment, his eyes were big and round, dark and shining. If that infuriating man popped back in and pressed him down over the lectern—or the student’s tables, or shoved him against any of the walls, or even tried to take him up against the damn _chalkboard_ —well. Callahan didn’t even think he’d manage to so much as complain about white marks ruining his black blazer until well afterwards.

Blinking, his eyes drifted towards the clock. He started. Damn! Half an hour late for the first security guard deposition in the Brooke Wyndam case! Pushing Masters to the back of his mind, he shot out the door.

*

Someone was rapping the door politely, and the Doctor (affixing a strained smile to his lips) stood to answer it. He began talking before he’d even fully swung the door open.

“No thank you Jonah, Zeb, I’m not interested in a complimentary copy of the Book of Mormon _today_ either—oh, it’s you, Master.”

Frankly it was somewhat of a relief not to have to deal with the Mormons, even though it looked as though he was now going to deal with the Master instead. The Doctor knew he should never have encouraged those boys by letting them whitter on for upwards of an hour about how, on the day of Judgment, their lord would descend from the sky by simultaneously using the spirals on top of each and every Mormon temple as funslides.* He also should have expected the Master to poke his nose into this mess, if only because it _was_ so very messy and embarrassing. He also _also_ should have known to be on the look out for this Master, given that he was unwillingly embroiled in the time line of this Master’s contemporary Doctor. But somehow the effort to save his companion and himself (or himselves, as the case might be—well, as the case _was_ ) (though not, albeit, in the evangelical way advocated to him by Jonah and Zeb, who were nice boys really and looked about as desperately unhappy to be harassing him as the Doctor was to be offered religious tracts) had distracted him. It was never easy to feel fully oneself in the throes of Cosmic Angst, good god, had he ever _really_ called a touch of temporal displacement ‘cosmic angst,’ in all seriousness?

About the third time the Master cleared his throat, the Doctor realized he had been monologuing the better part of this. He blamed stress and a degeneration of his standard of civility due to his prolonged lack of companionship, and offered both as excuses for his terribly rude behaviour. The Master offered the alternative theory that the Doctor had never yet been able to shut up, and that someone so incurably stubborn as he was could hardly be expected to learn. The Doctor told him that was ‘very funny.’ He did not mean it.

The Master walked around the Doctor and into the apartment without being asked. The Doctor was about to protest, but then realized he probably should have asked the Master to come in about when he’d begun to detail to him the finer (i.e. more hilarious) points of Mormon millenarian thought, so really it amounted to much the same.

“So,” the Doctor asked brightly, “what gave me away? I thought I hid my TARDIS remarkably thoroughly, if I do say so myself.”

“And your earlier self’s ship?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said casually, hoping to hide his wince at discovering that the Master knew about that as well, rather than just having stumbled across him. “Both versions of her.”

“You did,” the Master agreed, “but, as you might have guessed with the benefit of hindsight, I have my own means of tracking your predecessor. His TARDIS failed to re-enter the Vortex for several months. My interest and my suspicions were piqued.”

The Doctor’s lip quirked. “Were you _worried_ about me?”

“Hardly,” the Master corrected coolly. “You are, after all, a man of almost limitless resourcefulness, Doctor—capable of survival in environments far less sanguine than Massachusetts. I was merely curious.”

“Well, you’ve satisfied your curiosity—here I am.” The Doctor made a ‘ta-da’ gesture. “Sorting it out, as you can see—thanks for stopping by, Master, really, it’s very kind. Now if you’d just—”

The Master raised an amused eyebrow at the Doctor and refused to budge. He took full advantage of his ability to survey the Doctor from a height. It was a privilege he rarely enjoyed.

“Actually I found _him_ first. I admit it took me a moment, but I realized he was suffering the physical effects of the Blennovitch Limitation effect, which necessarily meant a second Doctor was in the vicinity. I suppose I’m fortunate that your DNA is so unique—it makes you particularly easy to hunt.

“As to sorting it out…” the Master glanced around the rented room. By the look of it, these were cheap lodgings, intended for a student, but the piles of books rivalled those of Professor Trefusis. “You appear to have been living here for some time. I assume the TARDIS that my Doctor’s ship collided with was your own, but _his_ ship is the only one accessible from this dimension after the explosion threw you both clear.”

The Master walked to the bookshelves, running his hand along the volumes as he thought before turning back to the Doctor. “It’s taking an inordinate amount of time to repair itselves, even for your rusty— ah. But perhaps my contemporary Doctor is too out of sorts for his TARDIS to recognize? And you’ve been trying—with, apparently, limited success—to ‘heal thyself’ for the past months.

“What explosion could have been powerful enough to cause him to jump a time track, I wonder?” The Master smirked at the Doctor’s expense. “My dear Doctor, did you by any chance finish a major repair and then _leave the shields down?_ ”

“Shut up,” the Doctor said, succinctly.

The Master started in on a rolling chuckle. The Doctor mentally started a stopwatch. Thirty-eight seconds later, the Master, red-cheeked and merry as a drunken mall Santa Claus rum-eggnoging his way through the last, long Christmas Eve shift, dispensed with the chortles.

The Doctor was frankly shocked at his restraint. His bitter laughs at his own expense over the past month had lasted a great deal longer than that. As the Doctor grew more strained, bored and frustrated with being trapped here, they had (increasingly) even sounded a bit _madder_ than the Masters’.

He preferred not to dwell on that.

“Doctor, allow me to help you,” the Master said, after managing to collect himself. “I have certain… methods of persuasion which are, perhaps, not available to you. And my price will be quite modest.” He leered at the Doctor to demonstrate that his _price_ would be the only modest component of his reward.

“Oh,” said the Doctor, round-eyed and excited, “are you going to try to _use telepathy_? I didn’t even _think_ of that—for three full seconds. Master, Master, _Master_ , his mind is locked tight as a _safe._ I should know. I’ve _tried_ to crack it.”

In fact he’d tried so hard and so frequently that the younger Doctor was convinced the older Doctor was an amorous visiting professor from Belgium with an extremely elegant walrus moustache** and a very European concept of personal space. ‘Callahan’ currently had a restraining order out against him.

“No, Doctor,” the Master corrected him very patiently. “I have something rather more subtle in mind… as it were.”

The Doctor glared hard at him, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “You’re _not_ going to try and ‘sex me better,’ are you?”

“No, no, noooo.” The Master waved a hand to deny it. He planned to trigger a subconsciously activated psychic trance. In order to do this, he’d have to have several minutes of access to a Doctor who was relaxed, vulnerable, and maintaining eye contact with him. So, yes, during sex, but the sex was more a means to an end (and of making good use of one’s opportunities) than a psychiatric tool in and of itself.

“Good, because that’s a _rubbish_ medical technique,” the Doctor muttered, unconvinced by the Master’s apparent sudden lack of interest in sex with him. Especially this Master. Especially that him.

“Well,” the Master soothed, “I’m sure you know best. You _are_ the Doctor here.”

The Doctor glared at him, not taken in in the slightest by the Master’s show of subservience. “My companion Lucie was injured in the blast as well. The TARDIS did what she could to protect both her and my past self, but I’d afraid she accomplished her task _too_ well. The Chameleon Field overloaded, and the radiation affected them both. It’s reversible, obviously—once I have my TARDIS back I should be able to use its Chameleon Arch to reverse the damage done to Lucie’s mind. I’d appreciate it if, while you do whatever it is you’re going to do, you don’t hurt anyone, _especially_ not Lucie. At the moment she’s in the other Doctor’s care—she should be safe enough there. You know what I’m like in that regeneration—inoffensive as a lightly buttered muffin.”***

***

Callahan reeled from the impressive smack Miss Woods planted on his cheek. For a girl who’d never handled anything heavier than a laden Bergdorf bag, she certainly swung like a veteran brawler.

As Miss Woods flounced into the night, taking the tattered shreds of his desperate hope of reasserting his heterosexuality with her, Callahan gave a self-pitying sigh.

This low sound was smothered by an even lower chuckle. Callahan stiffened and turned towards the door his student hadn’t clacked out of in her high heels a moment ago.

“ _You,_ ” Callahan hissed before he could think to stop himself, standing and taking a step towards the man who’d inspired enough maudlin internal division within him for a community theatre production of _Hamlet._ “This is all _your_ fault!”

“You very often think so. I fail to see what I had to do with your making an embarrassingly unsuccessful play for one of your young companions. You really are lost, aren’t you? Chasing children.” He tsked. “In your right mind you would be appalled, Doctor. But as it stands—should I be jealous, my dear?” The Master raised an eyebrow, clearly more amused than threatened.

“ _Jealous?_ ” Callahan raised a cool eyebrow himself, discretely gripping the lip of the table hard behind his back, trying to exorcize his nervousness by pressing it into the woodgrain. “You’ve no claim on me of any kind, and I don’t even know you.”

The Master’s teasing expression soured in a real way. “Even when you can’t even remember your own name,” he hissed, taking a step closer to the Doctor, “you still manage to be _infuriating_.”

With both hands, he grabbed the Doctor’s shirt jacket. Callahan had time to give him a look of shock and confusion (a decidedly _familiar_ expression on that face), and open his mouth to say something indignant (and that was familiar, too).

The Master shoved his tongue in the Doctor’s open mouth—he’d always wanted to head off one of his speeches like that.

Callahan made a _lot_ of shocked, protesting noises, but the Master was on a mission, and felt rather empowered by his plan (also by the Doctor’s burgeoning erection). He pushed the other man back over the councillor’s table he’d been perched on earlier. Callahan’s hand slipped from behind him and he found himself on his back, with Mister Masters on top of him—and with Mister Masters’ erection pressing against his own through two layers of trouser fabric. Absurdly, the quote about ‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ suddenly occurred to him. He would have laughed hysterically but for the way the man was starring at him, making him feel like prey caught in a snare. He just swallowed.

Masters held his gaze as he slipped the button of Callahan’s trousers through its hole. As he pulled the teeth of the zipper slipped apart, beginning that long, slow, inexorable pull—down, and down, parting the teeths’ chain of embraces. As he palmed Callahan’s erection. As he began to stroke him.

“Say my name,” he commanded, almost casually but for the glint in his eye.

“I’m _not_ going—” Callahan began with a sneer, only to gasp “Masters” helplessly when the man swept his thumb roughly over the head of his cock.

“Say it _properly_ ,” Masters hissed. “Open your eyes, look at me.” He’d planned to take the Doctor like this—when would he get another chance? But now that it came to it, it was the Doctor he wanted, desperately—not a shadow with his face. He owed the Doctor and himself better than that.

“ _What?_ What do you want me to say? That’s your _name,_ isn’t it? Do you have five middle names or something?” The part of Callahan that wasn’t thinking about heat and pressure and sure hands—and meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of _absolutely crazed_ eyes in the face of a handsome man can bestow—was very annoyed that he was being asked to _think_ , or engage in any conversation that wasn’t explicitly sexual in nature, at a time such as this.

Using their eye contact, the Master slipped in. This was his area of expertise, not the Doctor’s—even, it seemed, given the elder Doctor’s additional age and experience. The Master found fragmentation. There were barriers, there was resistance, but these structures were all so much scar tissue. They had grown up around the Doctor’s mind like kudzu did, to the point where it ate away at the bricks and mortar it clung to. Moving his hands to keep the Doctor unsuspecting, distracted and calm, the Master moved his mind with equal desire and commensurate care.

In the moment after the walls fell, and in the instant before the Doctor reasserted himself, the man in the Master’s arms bolted upright and gripped him frantically. He was out of control in a way he hadn’t bargained on. The Master felt a flicker of pity, and shared it between the man he held and himself. The Doctor—for it _was_ him, in some form—had wanted only what the Master would have willingly given him. In saving him, the Master had betrayed his trust, and it was exceedingly unlikely that he’d ever again be presented with another opportunity even half so promising. Now that the Doctor was back in his right mind he would hardly allow their encounter to reach any conclusion. At times, the Master sighed, he really was his own greatest enemy.

Then again, he thought, as Callahan’s desperate clench melted into a distinctly Doctorish embrace (his posture shifted, the whole depth of his mind flooded back and its surface altered accordingly, he even seemed to _smell_ different, but still he didn’t let go), perhaps this wasn’t a complete loss.

After a moment, the Doctor cleared his throat. “You’re still—”

“Ah.” The Master immediately released the Doctor’s (distractingly still hard) cock.

The Doctor coughed. “Thank you. Not for that, just now, I mean for restoring me. As for that just now, I, er, didn’t _necessarily_ mean—”

The Master eyed the Doctor as if he were Lucrezia Borgia, offering him a delicious-looking cake. “And what _precisely_ did you mean, Doctor?”

The Doctor glared at him. He _had_ been very grateful to the Master for extricating him from an embarrassing quagmire, and for only taking as much advantage of him in his vulnerable state as the situation seemed to require. Now he was just (still, if not _more_ ) embarrassed, and _annoyed_ (and feeling not a little rejected). The _nerve_ of the Master, snubbing him like this! After all that business with the Magna Carta, too!

“Oh _really,_ Master,” the Doctor huffed, making to stand, “if you’re going to reject me because I look, well, _older_ than I usually do, you see if I ever—”

The Master interrupted him, bursting out laughing. “You _idiot_ , he said, very fondly, kissing him. “You think I’ll be dissuaded by a mere Blennovitch Limitation Effect? My dear Doctor.” The Master’s lips curled into a smile, and his hand curled into its earlier position. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

The Doctor was mad if he thought for a moment that the Master might bat an eye at his transformation. The Doctor had been _his_ in every one of his bodies, after all (by all rights, if not in actual fact).

In fact the Master almost preferred it when the Doctor’s appeal was less blatant—there was more scope for his taste when the Doctor’s virtues weren’t of the most common sort. Anyone might be young and fair and winning, and _anyone_ could pant after such a man—almost a _boy,_ really. And many did, to the Master’s annoyance and distress. The Master appreciated an opportunity to exercise his discernment—to observe the Doctor, who appealed to him in any form just by virtue of being himself, and to find subtler physical charms. It was more interesting to possess, for example, incredibly expressive features that rippled like water disturbed at the slightest brush of desire—and to learn to appreciate such features, to fashion one’s own desire, like a craftsman.

“Ah—” the Doctor closed his eyes and leaned forward, relaxing into the other man’s hold. “Remind me again, what was it you wanted to hear earlier?”

The Master chuckled. “My dear Doctor, you really are the most _stubborn_ creature. You remember perfectly well. Sheer coquettery—really, at your age,” he tsked.

“I’m exactly as old as you are!” the Doctor protested. “To the _month_!”

“Sheer vanity then,” the Master teased, kissing the Doctor’s forehead, moving his hand in lazy strokes. Discretely he rummaged in his pocket with his free hand, found what he was looking for, and stealthily prepared himself.

“Master!” the Doctor began, cross and indignant—but then he groaned, realizing he’d been had. “You know, you’re perhaps the most insufferable person I’ve ever met.”

The Master smirked. “You’ve made a bold show of it, but it’s useless to pretend that you’re disinterested—you still know you want me when you can’t properly recall what species you are.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps the two phenomena are _connected_ , somehow. Loss of memory and loss of judgment—am I concussed, do you think?”

“Hm,” the Master deftly and suddenly flicked a well-lubricated finger around the Doctor’ entrance, grinning at the Doctor’s gasp, and shoved it in, tapping the prostate sharply. He leant forward, chin on the Doctor’s shoulder, and murmured into his ear. “Are you dizzy?” The Doctor just mewled in response.

The Master released the Doctor’s cock, removing his own from his trousers with the hand that wasn’t busy inside the Doctor. The Master leaned back and flicked his eyes from the Doctor’s face to his own cock and back again. He raised an eyebrow, asking.

Unconsciously, the Doctor’s tongue darted out and swept across his lower lip. He opened his mouth to speak, but with a groan the Master surged forward, heady with a sudden spike of lust, and crushed their mouths together, swallowing the Doctor’s startled whimper as he, with a feverish fumble and an exultant hiss, shoved himself in.

The Doctor wrapped his hands around the Master’s back for support. Following his lead, the Master lowered the Doctor so that he lay fully on the table, leaning down with him. The Doctor’s hands slipped under the Master’s suit jacket. His fingers clenched, his nails left white half-moon marks in the Master’s skin. The Doctor tilted his head back, arched his neck, and shut his eyes tightly. He shifted into the Master’s thrusts as eagerly as the Master pushed forward into him. He moaned and squirmed—perhaps the most reactive version of himself yet.

This Doctor came gorgeously—shame and restraint forgotten, straining for it. He trembled and arched his back as he came to a climax. His chest heaved as he drifted back down. His still-sensitive body fluttered around the Master’s cock at his slightest movement. The Master watched him, rapt, and came, transfixed.

No wonder this Doctor was so wary of contact, the Master thought as he brushed stray hair off the Doctor’s sweat-slick face. He was so guarded and unwilling to permit even casual touch because he was so incredibly receptive, so vulnerable to its effects. The Master longed to hear every sound, to witness every reaction, to make them _his_ , giddy in the knowledge that these facets of the Doctor belonged to him alone—their only, appreciative audience. He didn’t know the Doctor’s current body properly yet, aged or otherwise, and one night was hardly enough to make him its consummate master. If he had infinite time with the Doctor, it couldn’t be enough—and he had only a single encounter, bought with a grand favour. The opportunity to perform another such was unlikely to come his way this regeneration. This one imperfect night—bitter and brilliant.

“I could say the same about you,” the Doctor murmured, and the Master realized that in lieu of parroting the hackneyed ‘what are you thinking’ the Doctor, self-sufficient as always, had simply gone looking. Distracted, the Master hadn’t noticed the hand brought up to the contact point on his temple and the light touch on the surface of his mind.

The Master shook his touch off with a glare, stilling his body. “You might have asked.”

“I might have,” the Doctor agreed, more easily arrogant even than he had been in his human persona, “but you wouldn’t have told me the truth, and I find it makes things much easier.”

“You’ve been here _months,_ ” the Master hissed, now that they’d been irredeemably brought to the point. “You might well have wasted years, trapped in the smallest sliver of the tiny mind of a man who represents everything you despise about yourself and your favourite species. In return for saving you a thousand nights I’ve been given only _one_ of them. People who return lost purses fare better.”

The Doctor sighed, pushing the Master off him, sliding off the table and beginning to dress. “I did that because I chose to, not out of obligation.” The Doctor glanced back, looking at the Master for a beat. Searching his eyes. “What exactly is it you want?”

“ _Time_ ,” the Master pressed, loathe to engage in something as petty (or as painful) as a squabble over the amount of hours he was owed. He neatened himself in a few economic movements.

The Doctor looked away. “I—can give you time. But you couldn’t expect more than that of me. The end remains the same.”

“The story changes,” the Master insisted, inversing the grim finality of the CIA’s slogan and finding in it an unexpected hope.

The Doctor’s lip quirked in a tentative smile. “Very well. I accept.” He straightened his tie, self-consciously. “We can discuss terms tomorrow.”

“We can discuss them right now!” a strident, Northern, _familiar_ voice bleated from the door. Both men turned to find the elder Doctor and a TARDIS-mended Lucie Miller (née Elle Woods, now restored to factory settings, and the source of the unpleasant bleat), surveying them with, respectively, amusement and mild horror. Apparently the Doctor's return to himself had alerted his TARDIS that is was safe to materialize in this dimension, and while the Master had been otherwise occupied the older Doctor had been making equally efficient use of his time.

The younger Doctor took a step forward. “Miss Woods, I am sorry. I am _so_ sorry—”

“Oh no, what are you apologising for?” the older Doctor asked suspiciously. “What’ve you done to poor Lucie?”

“‘Lucie?’” the younger Doctor frowned. “She’s ‘Elle,’ unless I’m much mistaken—sudden comedic British accent aside.”

“Oi! I’ll forgive you that stuff earlier, because the Doctor said you were _seriously_ out of it, but there’s nothing wrong with my accent!”

“No,” the younger Doctor hastily backtracked, “no, I’m sorry, Miss—”

“Miller, Lucie Miller, and are you going to be sorry all day? Really, mate, hardly the first time some bloke’s made an unexpected move on me. Not that I’m Angelina Jolie, I’m just sayin’, it happens.”

“You propositioned our companion?” the older Doctor gaped at his younger self, as if he had never known him.

“She’s our companion?” The younger Doctor blanched. “My god, now I really _do_ feel terrible.”

“Yer, I ran out the door, back to my dorm room and straight into the TARDIS parked inside, and now I’m me. Wait, you’re _him?_ He’s _you?_ ” Lucie’s tweezed eyebrows made a climb for the dizzying heights of her peroxide-drenched hairline.

“And we are all together,” the Master finished with an eye roll, feeling very left out, and also feeling that they were one Dramatic Reveal short of a very traditional Gallifreyan dinner party.

“Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick.” Lucie sat down heavily on a juror’s bench. “I can’t _believe_ I got kissed by you.”

The younger Doctor bristled. “Oh, I don’t even look that old!”

Lucie snorted. “Who said anything about old? You’re the Doctor. It’s like finding out I got smashed and made out with my uncle!”

“Women marry their uncles all the time!” the Doctor said huffily, still quite sensitive about his altered, no-longer-quite-so-boyish appearance and the world’s apparent rejection thereof. At everyone’s slightly horrified stares, he appended, “in Southern India. It’s quite common.” After a moment of enduring some silent, stricken looks, the Doctor stumbled on. “Look, I wasn’t _recommending_ it, I was just stating a fact!”

“I think we’ve been here long enough to go stir crazy,” the older Doctor said, decisively. “It’s time we were off.” He slid his hands into his frock coat’s pockets and coughed in a way he probably thought was discrete. “I suppose you’re planning to collect on our agreement, Master?”

“I’ll take a rain check, Doctor,” the Master said smoothly, his eyes not leaving his contemporary Doctor. “For the moment, I’m otherwise engaged.”

The older Doctor opened his mouth to point out the absolute absurdity of the Master actually turning down one of their rare encounters, but stopped short when he noted the relaxation of tension between the Master and his earlier self. He certainly didn’t recall _that_ happening (and he was in full possession of his memories at the moment (for once (as far as he knew)), thank you very much). Perhaps the men before him were going to split off onto a different causal time track, or even about to change his own. Best to leave the time stream to its own devices, he always said.****

He and Lucie made quick farewells, and the Doctor was silent, his mind busy, as they re-entered the repaired TARDIS and took off.

Lucie broke in after a moment. The Doctor frequently observed that Lucie couldn’t bear not to hear her own voice for a full minute together. Lucie frequently gave him thirty seconds, but knew in her heart this was a wild exaggeration she made out of fond generosity. “You Time Lords just regenerate, right? Like you told me about? Like you did there?”

“ _Yes,_ ” the Doctor admitted, adding several additional vowels to the pronunciation. “Why? Is something the matter?”

“Well, then, you can stop sulking about how that beardy bloke back in America didn’t want to sneak off with you for a go. Just find whatever version of your boyfriend’s knocking around at the moment, right? Easy!”

“Lucie,” the Doctor said, shocked, “I am _not_ sulking about being denied some sordid encounter with the Master!” The very idea! _Him_ , chasing the _Master!_

“Wait, wait,” Lucie snickered, “his name is ‘the Master’? You just call him that? All the time? ‘Master, get us a cup of tea, would you?’ ‘Oi, Master, fancy running down to the shops? We’re fresh out of crisps.’”

The Doctor sighed. “It’s a _perfectly_ normal name on Gallifrey. Well. A perfectly normal name for a controlling psychopath.”

“Yeah yeah,” Lucie waved her had dismissively. “He’s the ex from hell, you hate him _so_ much you just have to stare moodily at him and Callahan and brood for the better part of an hour about it.”

“No honestly, Lucie, he’s a maniac! He is actually unbalanced!”

“Listen Doctor, I’ve heard it all before from my mates, and they’re back together before the week’s out because they got drunk and snogged in some pub and now Maureen’s knocked up—oh hey, there’s a thought, can your lot get pregnant?”

 _“What_?”

“You know,” Lucie said, significantly, “ _man_ -pregnant. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in ‘Junior.’ You’d be a right terror with pregnancy cravings. ‘I want squid sausages from Mars and I want them last Tuesday—what else do we have a Time Machine for?!’”

“Lucie,” the Doctor groaned, “for the first time in _months_ I am going to sleep in my own _bed_. My sheets have a ridiculously high thread-count because they’re woven by the gentle sentient spider people of Arachne. I may need to roll around in these sheets, reminding myself what happiness feels like for several days. While I’m gone, please, please, _please_ don’t let in any bearded villainous types whom you believe to be my ‘boyfriend,’ estranged or otherwise. Have you got that, Lucie?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re off to ‘enjoy your bed’ for several days, I’m not supposed to tell anyone—especially not your ex.”

The Doctor sighed. “It’s good to be home. And it’s good to have you back, Lucie. Even if you are stark raving mad.”

Lucie snorted at the hypocrisy of that. “Go on, get off to bed with you.”

With a weary sigh and a creaking stretch, the Doctor complied. Lucie headed to sleep as well. The strains of the trial and the encounter with Callahan lingered in her blood, just adrenaline traces now—ghosts of a girl she’d never really been.

In her bag, the Harvard keychain a disguised Master had given Elle Woods after his meeting with her Doctor and before his second encounter with his own beeped plaintively. An activated tracking device called out across stars and centuries.

 

 

* That this was possibly one of the greatest uses divine power the Doctor had ever encountered did not sway him in his resolve to never hear about it again.  
** Had the Master known about this he would undoubtedly have been impressed with this Very Cunning Disguise.  
*** It was a good job the scene had already ended, because at this point the Doctor had rather lost the Master. He should have known better that to offer up a mental image like ‘the Doctor, slathered in butter’ to the Master’s highly suggestible mind.  
**** This is almost the exact opposite of What He Always Said.

 


End file.
